Questions from someone who last used RISCOS on an A310
Steve Fryatt (216) 2105 posts |
So can you give a breakdown of the overhead costs, comparing the significance of dropping the fonts to the other costs that have been mentioned? Until anyone can confirm that the font licencing is in any way significant compared to the other overhead costs of the printed version, we have no idea if there’s any point changing the look and feel to save a few pennies.
Yes, I’ve seen that. I don’t disagree, but would suggest that dropping the fonts alone won’t fix the problem. ETA. You’ll note that I’ve suggested that this could be something that ROD might wish to help with: funding the overhead costs of the printed User Guide, so that it can be supplied free to everyone in PDF form and remain available to those who want a dead tree version. My guess, given the size of the market, is that we’re not talking massive sums of money on any given book. |
Doug Webb (190) 1180 posts |
+1 Agree
+1 agree With new users you need to get them hooked in quickly and not put barriers in their way. Once they are in then a more full experience based on options is one model that can differentiate.
Everything because that input is part of the total costs of production and hence come in with the break even price you need. Now granted someone may do the changes for free at the moment and be happy to continue to do so but that may not be a constant. Anyway the key here is as Chris says we need to encourage first or returning users and asking them to pay for a dead wood 588+ plus page user guide to find out about this OS is not encouragement it is a barrier to entry that we can do with out. By the way I say this as someone who has purchased the last 5.24 User Guide though not yet the 5.28. |
Andreas Skyman (8677) 170 posts |
I definitely agree that a printed copy should be offered at a price covering the costs and ideally giving some revenue to sustain the ROOL project. Having worked with publishing, however, my experience is that costs for acquiring ISBN ranges and for sending to legal deposits are entirely dwarfed by the actual costs of printing, in particular for small print runs. It should, however, be noted that my perspective is Swedish and we only have to send 13 copies (if memory serves) to the library archives, it may be more in the UK. In fact, all costs, including costs of hiring a layouter and acquiring the printing rights are small compared to the printing. (The only thing that can compete, in my experience, is translation, but that’s not an issue here.) Anyway, it seems this thread has derailed, so I think I will let it rest there. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
Dropping expensive fonts and using alternates was the proposal. and
You keep harping on about “other costs” when the main discussion is about provision of a PDF.
We’ve been told that the free status of a PDF is not a reasonable expectation since the guides, as currently formatted, use licensed fonts with a significant cost per copy – including when used in a PDF. Beyond the font cost I would love someone to tell me what the cost of a PDF is, because that is the heart of the matter. What happens with the cost of the dead tree version is a different matter, there are obvious printing costs and the slab of dead tree has to be paid for as does the cost of the printers labour. The price of the paper edition should reflect that and be pitched at a level that balances income per copy with total sales volume. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
Of course, without the cost of fonts the cost of a PDF is essentially the cost of paying the authors of the content – but I don’t think any of the contributors were looking for payment when they submitted the new content or edited the old into a more meaningful or accurate form. |
Andrew McCarthy (3688) 606 posts |
True. Perhaps, continuing the User Guide conversation in this thread – RISC OS 5 user guide . Amongst the other choices RISC OS User Guide PDF , User Guide updates . |
Doug Webb (190) 1180 posts |
I would refer back to what ROOL said on this thread:
So to square the circle you need agreement on the approach and costs from those who have the IPR and then build that in to the offerings. Though I advocate a easy entry point for new and returning users I also acknowldge there is a cost and how that is recovered just needs to be worked out as part of the solution. |
Steve Fryatt (216) 2105 posts |
We’ve been repeatedly told that the aim of making the PDF freely available is not to remove the option of buying the printed version of the manual. However, by providing a printed option, you’re immediately adding in fixed costs that otherwise don’t exist. The need to produce a print-ready PDF, for one1. The need to purchase an ISBN and lodge six2 copies of that printed work with the UK deposit libraries, for another. At present, ROOL’s approach seems to be to produce the printed version and sell it at a price which covers these additional fixed costs within what they consider a reasonable volume of sales, after which they make the PDF freely available until the book is superseded. Alternative options which retain the printed version3 need to have a viable way to ensure that it still breaks even whilst allowing for some people4 who currently buy the printed version deciding that they’re no longer interested now that there’s a free PDF. Otherwise, they risk ending the possibility of further publishing endeavours. 1 I’d argue that if you’re purely doing an electronic version, and not an electronic version of a printed tome, PDF isn’t the format to use. 2 Technically, it’s one copy with the British Library within a month of publication, then wait up to a year for the other five to write to you to request their copies. So you need to assume six in your calculations of costs, even if none of the others ever get back to you. 3 Remember that we’re constantly being assured that no-one advocating a free PDF has any intention of killing off the printed book, remember? 4 I might be cynical on this, but I do have the advantage of experience of the RISC OS user base. At shows5, I sell copies of my software in aid of charity, and at every event there’s a very definitely non-zero number of people who are standing there holding their fiver for a disc, ask if they can buy one and how much it will be, are told “£5, in aid of [insert charity of the day], or it’s free to download from my website”… and who then put their money away, with “oh, well, if I can get it free, I’m not paying for it [even if it is for charity]”6. In the light of that, you’ll forgive my scepticism of the suggestion that having the User Guide available for free won’t affect the viability of producing a printed version (if that printed version has to cover its own costs by itself). 5 Remember them? 6 But, at the same time, those who pay their fiver and won’t take a disc in exchange should very definitely be recognised. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
The IPR can only be assessed to have a value if you do something with it. If ROOL wish to gather in some financial benefit from the IPR then perhaps making the PDF version available at a modest cost would be an option. Given the zero cost of a PDF without costly fonts that seems to me to be pure profit, although the administrative cost of making those PDF sales might exceed a “modest cost” |
Steve Fryatt (216) 2105 posts |
Not really, because significant parts of the current guide content still appear to be directly derived from the Acorn manuals from the 90s, updated for the present day. Creating new from scratch would be a massive undertaking, for which we almost certainly don’t have the resource. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
I’m sorry you’re wrong. The PDF has only ever appeared on the ROOL site when an update edit sequence is in progress. The previous version and an intermediate edit appear with the intermediate being updated with the community edits merged in. When the final submissions for the edit were taken and merged in both the previous edition and the intermediate edit were removed from the site.
It’s the most widely used cross-platform format that retains the layout as intended and it’s free.
I have no doubt whatsoever that a free PDF would mean some people don’t give consideration to buying a paper copy, but those were unlikely to go the dead tree route anyway,1 so counting them as lost potential sales is optimism on a Trumpian scale.
I’m an NHS worker, have been for decades – because I enjoy it2. The same answer applies to the collection of Volunteers at the hospital. All of whom have been subjected to verbal abuse when gently reminding people (visitors) they should wear a mask. Despite that they continue to volunteer. This country functions because of volunteers and charities 1 They are more likely to check out the cut-price offer for the previous version, sold cheap to clear the stock. 2 Not for the money. I wouldn’t recommend the NHS for anyone wanting high pay. |
David J. Ruck (33) 1636 posts |
I think anyone new coming to the platform is more likely to watch a video tutorial (like the WiFi sheep ones) rather than read anything. The Welcome Guide is more likley to be read by someone coming back to the platform, and a bit of 90s nostalgia is probably what they are after. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
Ah, but that Acorn derived IPR was part of the package that sat with Castle for a while and now sits with, erm, the person (and partner) who took the rough end of the rebuke about IPR… |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
Well, that’s an absolute certainty if the only free information they can get is a video on a 3rd party site. We have had a couple of new users put their head above the parapet1 to say they believe the User Guide should be a free PDF, how many more stay quiet for fear of being the target of criticism that even made one of the owners of the RO IPR wince? It would be interesting to know the base costs and the total sales which impact on this discussion. 1 I salute their bravery. |
Chris Hall (132) 3559 posts |
we only have to send 13 copies (if memory serves) to the library archives, it may be more in the UK It is six copies in Britain and one central address will receive them all. |
Steve Fryatt (216) 2105 posts |
At present, ROOL’s approach seems to be to produce the printed version and sell it at a price which covers these additional fixed costs within what they consider a reasonable volume of sales, after which they make the PDF freely available until the book is superseded. So when “UserGuideEditor” said “For the User Guide for 5.24 a PDF was made available as promised once the project broke even, up until the time it became obsolete”, they weren’t telling the truth, then? You can find the exact quote here. Can you explain where I’m wrong in what I wrote when referencing the statement from UserGuideEditor, please?
Not what was written in the post referenced above. I think you might be in danger of assuming that correlation equals causation. ETA. To avoid you having to think that one through, one wouldn’t be too surprised if the 5.24 UG broke even around the same time that work on editing the 5.28 UG began – if it did, it would suggest that ROOL got their calculations about right. And if the PDF of the 5.24 UG was made free “until the time it became obsolete”, then that would be until the 5.28 UG was published – which would very likely be soon after the editing work was done, given that it would be held open until the OS was frozen. This does not mean that the availability of the 5.24 UG was as a result of the editing work, however, merely that the two largely coincided.
Would you like to have a read of this and ponder what IPR made the journey from Acorn to E14 to Pace to Castle to ROD? It could have included the technical publications, but also it might not have done. I would imagine that it very much depended on what Pace bought for set top box use all those years ago. ROOL certainly publish stuff that didn’t come from the Castle IPR; I’d not be surprised if the technical publications fell into that category. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
I wonder if that’s really true. I don’t think I’m alone, far from it, in finding the trend towards exclusively video presentation of material bloody annoying. You can’t go at your own pace, you can’t easily scan back to check something, there’s no index. Hopeless for reference. Very useful to show you how some mechanical gizmo works or how to tickle a tortoise, but bugger all use in describing how to use a computer.
Well, I’m not someone coming back to the platform, I’ve been here all along, but I still need documentation. I prefer it on screen, because I’ve got a nice big monitor I can have my documentation in one window – or two, or three – and my work in one or two more, all visible and legible at once. But I’m not averse to dead tree if that’s what’s available. I don’t give two monkeys what font it uses, and I’m certainly not nostalgic about how the book looks. It costs someone time to produce documentation, even if it’s on screen. What I do, I do voluntarily; if anyone pays me for any of it, I’m grateful, but I don’t expect it (and don’t often get it). If someone’s writing documentation for anything RISCOSy, they can put a price on it – and perhaps I’ll think it’s worth it and pay up, or perhaps I won’t bother with it. I’m not really into contributing to the cost of dead tree versions; if the cost of dead tree versions is built into the price of PDFs, I’ll probably manage without those, too, because it’ll be fairly steep unless the market’s a lot bigger than it looks. Sorry. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
I recall what he said without referring back to get the specific words and punctuation, however unless it only broke even at the same time as a new edit started there’s a disparity in the statement and the effect on the available link on the web site and you say:
If the calculation was actually intended to produce a minimal period where the one completed guide was rather short and coincided with a new edit sequence then yes that would match. I’d also put it down as a rather cynical way of meeting the stated terms and I hadn’t actually thought of ROOL personnel in that light, so I’m going to think about something else.
I was thinking of the collective bundle that included items like the DDE, that AFAIK never went near PACE and, were marketed by Castle before the code IPR moved from PACE. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
I’m so glad someone understands where I’m coming from. This wouldn’t actually so ridiculous an argument (and certainly seems to be) from my side if it weren’t for the fact that I have so many of these things in dead tree format or otherwise that for me it’s entirely irrelevant. For the new user it’s a major challenge. In the last 24-48 hours we’ve had a new user that finds RO “non-intuitive” because it’s different to the OS GUI behaviour they know elsewhere. Maybe people think we should have an Unwelcome Guide? I’m beginning to understand Nemo a little more. 1 Well we do, sort of, if you look in the Direct image and dig into the documents to find the User Guide PDF that apparently shouldn’t be there. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
I miss Nemo. I wish he’d come home. |
Steffen Huber (91) 1953 posts |
It all sounds much too complicated for me. My suggestion for simplification: produce a PDF free for all. Set up a bounty for a “proper” print run of n copies. Wait if the bounty succeeds. If it succeeds, supply all interested bounty donaters with a free printed copy and sell the rest. If it does not succeed – do as any non-succeeding bounty and distribute the money over the other bounties. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
Sounds good to me. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
(select up to three answers) If you had an email, you could ask |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
Like Clive, I think that’s a decent suggestion. |
Doug Webb (190) 1180 posts |
I like that suggestion as well and did say that one element earlier.
You need to be careful in that say 30 people giving £10 each may break you even on a print run but 100 paying just £3 may make you a loss on each free printed copy…just saying that human nature may cause you an issue. Perhaps a free copy to all those who contribute xx to the bounty may just do it and also get you over the line? |